There is also rx, which is similar to m except it always returns the regex itself rather than the result of calling it. (A bare /…/ acts like rx/…/)

Smartmatching can be confusing when you are first starting out.
I'd argue it can be confusing to people who are otherwise experts in Perl 6.
(It's still a little confusing to me, and I know how it works.)
I also did a poor job trying to explain it here, but I was trying to be relevant to your question, and your use of ~~ made it harder to explain.

To keep myself sane I try to follow a few basic rules.
These apply to ~~, where, and when.

That's a great answer, thanks. It should improve my use of when, where, ~~, and *. Another thing that tripped me up, which lead to the question, was that I had assumed that //` and m// where equivalent. If I had just used // I would not have learned as much.
– Norman GaywoodJan 25 at 0:10

@NormanGaywood There is rx/…/ for when you want to pass the regex around as a value instead of running it immediately. It is not as commonly used as just /…/
– Brad GilbertJan 25 at 3:23

I thought I was using "Quoted lists are LTM matches" so /< aaa bbb ccc >/ does work. Interestingly if I drop the m:i like in your example, my example works (without ignore case).
– Norman GaywoodJan 24 at 3:46